


Heartbeat

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: 'how do i tag this' 'tag it eternal pain and suffering', Bad Ending, Episode Ignis Spoilers, SEVERE Episode Ignis Spoilers, Semi-graphic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:19:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13025055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Ignis had to be up ahead. He had to be.(EPISODE IGNIS SPOILERS)





	Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> I'm definitely not kidding about the spoilers part.
> 
>  
> 
> Please turn back if you haven't finished it.
> 
>  
> 
> Otherwise, feel absolutely free to proceed.

The long corridors were chokingly narrow and thick with the miasma of daemons popping in and out of existence. Those sounds, the squelching, the cackling – they were the only sounds that accompanied him alongside his own ragged breath and his heart beating so loud the other three must have heard it. If they did they did not let him know, for the only noise they did was also panting.

Sprinting through these corridors following a man who would have wanted him dead a mere week ago was less frightening than what could be happening anywhere else in Zegnautus Keep. Only occasionally was their way barred by daemons that did not lose interest in the four men on a mad rush through Zegnautus Keep, and all of them near immediately were greeted with drawn weapons.

“Time will be of the essence. Whether you trust me or not matters little, but I’m afraid neither of us will be afforded much of a choice.”

A temporary truce was the last thing Noctis Lucis Caelum had ever expected from Ravus Nox Fleuret. Not after Altissia. Not after Tenebrae. There was so much this man rightfully hated about him and the kingdom he hailed from, yet it had been Ravus standing in a room Noctis and his friends had entered in their desperate dash through foreign enemy territory. The path to the Crystal was barred behind a maze of corridors and locks, surely with something far more dangerous than the daemons prowling about the otherwise devastated and desolate Keep. They did not speak as they rushed through corridor after corridor, even though there were so many things that Noctis would have liked to ask the other prince.

But there was one thing more important than that, the very reason he had dropped nearly everything at once to cross an entire continent in but a week.

He trusted Ignis to keep himself together even in the face of danger. He knew Ignis was clever enough to manage staying alive.

The loud thundering noise from deeper within Zegnautus Keep was anything but reassuring, and he stopped dead for a second. Gladiolus, Prompto or Ravus must have heard how his heart stopped for a second. It was all he heard other than his own panicked breathing, just that awfully loud heartbeat of his. Just as it had in Altissia, just as it had when he had faced the Archaean and the Hydraean, the way it had when they had arrived on that hill overlooking Insomnia after fighting their ways through several Niflheim troops and when Cor finally picked up the phone. All those times he had not been alone, for even during that accursed fight in Altissia he had Luna backing him up – it cost her her life, which made Ravus helping him even all the more bewildering.

Prompto had stopped to ask if he was okay, and all Noctis managed to wheeze out was that the sound of something collapsing had broken his focus. He said that he was okay, that they needed to move before the daemons caught up to them. Time was of the essence, after all.

The long corridors choked with miasma blended together. It all looked the same to him, and he was ready to simply stop dead and burst into tears. Something was extremely wrong here, and he could feel it. It accompanied his too loud in his ears heartbeat, made it harder and harder to breathe. Breathing was harder than expected, something constricted him from the inside and there was nothing he could do. Perhaps it was the miasma. It had to be the miasma doubled with the debilitating fear that chased him through the corridors. Maliciously cackling choruses of daemons were joined by his own voice urging him onwards, ever onwards. His heart was betraying him, but still none of the other three reacted, and Noctis almost ran straight into Ravus’ back.

“This isn’t good.”

The central elevator they had taken earlier had stopped halfway up, forcing them to pass even more nondescript and daemon-infested corridors. Now they were faced with what was yet another of these corridors, longer than the others. At the end of this corridor must have once been a wall or a door of some sort, but all that remained was a hole in said wall. Whatever had happened in the room beyond must have been of devastating power.

“The loud noise earlier...”

He heard an almost familiar screeching and clanking noise as somewhere behind them yet another kind of daemon manifested. One that would not idly ignore them if given the chance. Noctis summoned a weapon, but Ravus put a hand out to hold him back.

“Never you mind these. I shall take care of them; you three go on ahead.”

“… Thanks.”

Ignis had to be up ahead. He had to be. Thus Noctis was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and before either Gladiolus or Prompto could argue with Ravus’ decision, Noctis took off.

* * *

The moment he stepped into the place the entire world shifted. Before it had been a mad rush, his heartbeat loud and commanding. It was as if time slowed down horribly, with the other two still trying to catch up with him after that sprint. The room was eerily still, with nothing in it moving at all. There was debris everywhere, further up ahead Noctis saw the familiar gleam of the Crystal. Apparently this had been the top floor which had somehow been levelled during whatever had made the entire Keep shake earlier. The unreal stillness only made the loud _thump-thump_ of his heart worse, for there was no sound in this place at all. No wheezing. No gasping.

Nothing. Just stillness, holding everything in its grasp, including...

“ _Ignis!”_

Although his entire body felt like it was made of lead, he forced himself onwards. Every step sounded too loud against the ghastly quiet, against the sheer lack of a response. Ignis always responded – even if it was just a twitch of the hand, or a furrowed brow as he read books or did some paperwork. Sometimes it just had been a light tap of his shoe against the floor, sometimes he looked up and smiled at the prince for a moment before going back to his work. Ignis always responded.

He didn’t do it now. No twitch. No light movement, no eyes opening to look at him. The leaden feeling was replaced with scathing horror, and Noctis reached into his Armiger to pull his trusty sword out of it. He needed to close the distance, make sure Ignis had just collapsed and was so out of it that even Noctis’ voice did not reach him. He tossed the weapon with a desperation he had only recently felt when all his blows seemed to bounce right off Leviathan as the goddess wreaked havoc. Even the warp felt like it twisted space further than it usually did, as if something about reality was coming undone right around Noctis. It was a frighteningly familiar feeling, one that he had known for so long that it might just have been his first memory. A familiar, twisted feeling. Whispers of power unyielding, scattering after they had been used.

A feeling that followed his late father everywhere, and once he landed the warp Noctis all but prayed to the gods that he had fought, to the gods that seemingly had left him on his own after Luna’s untimely and undeserving demise during the height of the battle between gods and empire upon Accordan shores.

It had been so long since he had managed to fail a landing after a warp. He had often spent afternoons feverish on his own couch after training warps, for he had to learn them properly but overexerting himself often led to these fever fits. It was always Ignis who had been there, even if other people sometimes joined afterwards. But Ignis had ever been the constant, the reassuring pillar to lean on, the friend to walk this path together with. Unwaveringly loyal just as Gladiolus and Prompto were, but on a different level somehow. Noctis stumbled with a gasp, terror still gripping him in the strange stillness of this place. He dropped to his knees after the stumble, and still Ignis did not move.

“Iggy… c’mon man… this isn’t funny at all...”

There had been so many fights where they had gotten knocked out. Noctis could count the times that Ignis had actually taken a blow so heavy that it left him unable to respond on one hand, and even then it was often but a few hours. Ignis always mumbled something in his sleep, was the one most liable to twitch even in unconsciousness.

Noctis didn’t even remember the last time his hair was that dishevelled, for if anything Ignis always looked proper even in the heat of battle.

_Thump._

Ignis looked like something had burnt his arms. One arm was stretched out as if he had tried reaching for something or someone, and there was an undeniably pained expression on his face even as he lay there. He couldn’t bear looking that for more than a split second, less than a heartbeat. It was still so loud, as if his heart had moved into his head. Somewhere behind him he heard Prompto and Gladiolus call for him and Ignis, and Noctis reached out. He stopped just an inch or two above Ignis’ back.

“H-Hey… seriously… it’s not fun...” He put his hand down. “… Iggy?”

_Thump._

Ignis’ back felt cold. The hot horror Noctis had felt up until now in the pit of his stomach turned into his blood freezing in his veins. He withdrew his hand as if he had burnt himself and almost desperately reached for Ignis’ neck. At long last there was an eerie silence surrounding him, befitting this very room. Part of him wanted Ignis to jump up to his feet and yell something completely out of character. That this was all a joke. That Prompto had set him up for that.

Noctis looked into Ignis’ face again. That terrified expression was frozen and rigid, and only now he realised that Ignis’ eyes were indeed open. Glassy, sightless.

No pulse.

His entire face was covered in what looked like cracks, like tracks of ash that had been drawn on him. He had withdrawn his hand as he stared into Ignis’ empty eyes.

Then he saw it.

The ring.

The Ring of the Lucii, still on Ignis’ hand. Pulsating softly, as if begging to be picked up.

Noctis raised his hands to his own face. That coldness. That stillness. The lack of a response. Those green eyes that stared just past him, stared at nothing at all. Gladiolus and Prompto reached him and Ignis, both of them clearly unsure what to think of this entire scene. Something was bubbling up inside him despite the fact that he felt just as cold as death itself.

Prompto must have said something, but all Noctis heard was an awful static noise, like a screech in the back of his head. Whatever the other two were saying he did not hear it at all, his focus entirely on the ring on Ignis’ hand. It wasn’t until one of them – he didn’t know whether it was Prompto or Gladiolus, but it most likely had been Prompto – put a hand on his shoulder. The static dissolved almost violently, and Noctis shoved that hand off. All those black clothes looked the same to him, and the one who put his hand on his shoulder was behind him.

“ _Don’t touch me,”_ he hissed; whichever of the two it had been actually apologising quietly. With the static gone, the reality hit him even further. His sight was swimming at this point, but he was rather certain he was not crying at all. Reaching out and taking that cold hand in his was harder than anything else in his life, harder than accepting that Luna would have wanted him to continue on just as his father had. Harder than accepting the help of all these people who had sacrificed so much for him to get to this point, with the Crystal glimmering in the background.

Noctis was a weakling, he realised when he nearly gagged as he pulled the ring off Ignis’ cold, stiff hand. He had been so weak that not only his own father and Luna had died in the process, but now also Ignis had lost the fight against the empire. Ignis, who always was the most level-headed, who was always around, who always seemed to have an idea how to take care of things. Ignis who had worn the Ring of the Lucii, Ignis whose reasons for that died with him.

Died.

Died.

_Died._

The Ring of the Lucii felt like a still warm piece of coal in his hand. Familiar. Not comforting the slightest, for this accursed thing had been the reason Luna and his father had died. This thing was on Ignis’ hand as he died.

_Ignis was dead._

He curled his hand around the ring, the sting of reality settling in and the weight of this tiny thing almost crushing him. Ignis was dead, he had died because Noctis had once more been too weak, been too slow. A Chosen who couldn’t even help the ones he was supposed to protect. And now the one who ever stood at his side, who unrelentingly supported him even as he made bad decisions, had paid the price for this foolish prince’s weakness.

“My, my.”

That sudden voice was grating, intrusive. Hellishly loud through the misty veil of grief that had fallen over Noctis as he sat there staring at his closed fist. He looked up slowly only to be met with the sound of Gladiolus and Prompto drawing their weapons behind him and an almost infuriatingly calm grin.

“The king arrives, but alas, too late.”

“… Ardyn.” Noctis noticed that his voice was shaking, but he still looked up at the man with what he hoped looked like a glare and not a hopelessly empty stare. Whatever it wound up being, the Chancellor of Niflheim kept his infuriating grin as he took a step forwards.

_Clack._

“Had you but been faster…”

Ardyn’s voice cut through the silence; it almost felt like someone was holding Noctis at gunpoint. He was right. The man was absolutely right. Had he been faster perhaps Ignis would still be breathing at the very least, still be someone he could save. That ring, that accursed little ring of his bloodline, it could have helped him control the Crystal. Perhaps he could have used it to heal whatever those injuries Ignis had. Make certain that whatever killed him did not actually kill him. But here he was, way too late, with just these glassy eyes and the horrible burns telling him the cold, harsh truth that would never stop being a truth, irreversible just as having Cor confirm what the news said, just as irreversible as Ravus offering him a hand instead of his sister had been.

Somewhere behind him Prompto clicked his gun and Noctis finally lowered his gaze again.

_Clack._

“Had you but been faster, you might have at the very least been able to fulfill his dying wish.”

Noctis snapped his head back up again. He was still numb overall but that strange gut feeling of his, hot-white against the numbness flared up again as Ardyn took yet another step. His smile was starting to look deranged rather than anything else, and he was rather certain that Prompto’s hands were shaking. It certainly sounded like the rattle of the gun in his hands.

“His… what…?”

Another step. Ardyn raised an arm to seemingly reach out to him, his expressing still unchanged from the deranged sneer. “Oh, he tried _so hard_ to succeed. Put on the ring and fought with the fervent rage of a hundred desperate men, ready to do just about _anything_ to keep you safe. And you did not even manage to be there as he died. He fought his way across a war zone, managed to withstand things that would have brought a weaker man to his knees in mere moments, and yet you cannot even just arrive on time. A pity, truly a pity.”

_Clack._

“All he wanted was not to die without you. Had I not been the one who fought him here I would be calling _you_ the monster, my _dearest_ Noctis.”

Prompto dropped the gun behind him. Gladiolus said something, _yelled_ something. Noctis’ sight only started swimming again, the ring suddenly weighing more than the world itself. He reached out to Ignis’ face. It was so rigid, so unmoving. He still had whatever fear, whatever terror had gone through his head when he died burned into his face. That was something that Noctis would never be able to forget. Ignis was a rather expressive person when content but always managed to keep himself together. Actually showing fear was something he rarely did, and even then just in private. Just between the two, maybe the four of them. He exhaled slowly and withdrew his hand again.

Noctis stood up. He uncurled his hand and looked at the ring, then once more at the man grinning at him like something that had crawled right out of his worst nightmares. Another shaky breath.

For just another second the unnerving feeling of reality shifting around him started up again. He grabbed the ring, stared at it for a split second. His heartbeat had slowed to a crawl, quiet but menacing. An awful reminder that he lived while his father and Luna did not. The reminder that Ignis had just died on enemy grounds after fighting a battle that should have been his.

Something switched off in that moment. He slammed the Ring of the Lucii on his finger despite the thing nearly hurting him with its strange pulsating powers. He let out a loud snarl and lunged forwards, weapons at the ready before any of the people in this place could even react. He’d trained with members of the Kingsglaive, had Ignis always nagging him about properly learning how to aim his warps.

Ardyn Izunia looked wholly unbothered by the sword that had been all but _plunged_ right through his shoulder. He kept on grinning, staring at Noctis with that infuriating smile.

“Are you _finally_ ready to fight your _own_ fights instead of letting others take your place?”

In any other situation he would have been terrified that this man yanked the sword out of his shoulder and sent Noctis staggering backwards a few steps. Any other situation and he would have let Gladiolus and Prompto draw their weapons, but just the familiar sound of a sword being summoned behind him made him grind his teeth.

“Don’t interfere! This is between him and me!”

The blood on his blade was black, glistening in the strange light of the Crystal behind them. A cold shudder ran down his back as Ardyn’s grin froze on his face.

“Too bad you do not look like half the sport your friend there was. Even your ancestors slowly killing him did not stop him, not even once.”

“Shut up, shut up, _shut up!”_ He reached into the Armiger and tossed the first weapon he came across. The spear missed Ardyn by a few inches, and all the man did was click his tongue in disappointment. He wasn’t even armed.

“Truly? _That_ is the extent of your powers?”

“I said shut up!”

“How thoroughly disappointing. Well then.” Ardyn shook his head as Noctis stood there quivering and staring at his own hands, trying to figure out how to proceed next. “Perhaps I ought to reunite you with your dear Ignis.”

Something snapped. Noctis’ head shot back up as the almost static noise in his head increased again. The strange feeling from before now shot through his entire body.

“ _Don’t you dare say his name!”_

And once more he lunged forward, his sight swimming, his weapons at the ready, and some disturbing sound that followed him.

He didn’t even realise that he was screaming.

* * *

The first thing he saw again were his own hands. On one hand he had the Ring of the Lucii, on the other his trusty glove. The ring was glowing softly from having been used.

Both hands, even his entire arms, were covered in black blood. There were weapons scattered around, all of them covered in a fine layer of equally black blood. There were pieces of clothing strewn around, formerly of some colour but now mostly drenched in just the ever same black. Black, black, black. It was like the Citadel all over again, except there were no shining hallways to walk through. There were no polished floors to slide around on when none of the guards were around, there were no men or women of the Crownsguard or the Kingsglaive to bump into even though he and Ignis thought they were on their own.

He’d not be sliding around the polished floors with Ignis ever again. There’d be no mildly amused scolding from his father or Clarus Amicitia. Nothing of the like would ever happen again.

He stared at his blood-drenched hands. There was a severed hand just lying in front of him, miasma floating up from it as it vanished. A daemon.

The Chancellor of Niflheim had been a daemon. A daemon that had driven Ignis to a point where he saw no other way out than slipping on the selfsame ring Noctis now wore, after all those years and discussions and refusals. It ever was the ring of his father, not the ring of his bloodline. He wasn’t worthy of wearing it, not after having had so many people throw their lives on the line for him.

Not after Ignis had done whatever he had done.

His arms seemed to be steaming now, the black blood about to burst into miasma just as the chunks of flesh tossed around did. All Noctis could do was bark out a dry laugh.

His scattered weapons vanished as he dismissed them, the dry laugh bubbling up from the very pits of his stomach. He had just torn the Chancellor of Niflheim into _pieces._ There was nothing left of the daemon wearing a human skin that had cornered the one of the people Noctis wanted to be okay more than anything else. The dry laughter turned shrill as he raised his hands to his face and buried it in them, the miasma floating off in small clouds. The entire time – it had only been minutes, though it felt like hours upon hours for Noctis – Gladiolus and Prompto had watched the battle unfold in front of them with nothing short of _terror_ on their faces. Now that Noctis was laughing, the two of them snapped out of their trance. They still weren’t exactly sure what to do in this very moment.

Noctis continued laughing, his voice cracking further and further.

Eventually the laughter simply turned into sobbing. He dropped his arms as he sat there on his knees, not even a trace remaining of Ardyn Izunia, whoever that bastard had truly been. He’d not cried over his father’s death – he had yelled at Cor instead in the tomb, with the Marshal staring at him with almost glassy eyes. Perhaps the man had only chosen to suffer in silence, behind whatever walls he had built up, much like Cid had done. He’d not cried long for Luna – she would have wanted him to carry on, and her brother was waiting in Gralea to help him find his longest friend. The one he loved just as much as he had loved Luna.

But Ignis wouldn’t be standing up to stand beside him any longer. Noctis had completely and utterly failed all the people he loved, save for two of his closest friends. And judging by how quiet this entire room once again was, they were too confused to move in or at least ask if he was okay. Perhaps even scared.

The sobs subsided after a while. His voice broke down and he closed his eyes, the silence in this godsforsaken room finally broken by almost hesitant steps from his friends. His _living_ friends. Ignis would not be jumping up to ask him if he was alright. Wouldn’t be around for every minor sickness he contracted, for everything and anything. If he ever ascended to the throne there would be someone else in the position of his advisor. Lucian kings needed them, those that died were to be replaced. Noctis couldn’t leave that seat empty if the gods saw it fit for him to survive.

Another dry sob escaped him as he heard Prompto stumble over a piece of debris behind him.

“I...”

He raised his head a little to stare at the hallway that had led them here. A man in white was approaching them with an obvious limp to his step, the sword he used dragging along the floor. Ravus must have won that fight, although he must have sustained some sort of injury. Gladiolus and Prompto were now behind him, one of them – most likely Gladiolus – slowly putting a hand on one of his shoulders. Any trace of black blood was gone by now, with nothing telling of the fact he had thoroughly enjoyed tearing that man into fine ribbons. The way that amused glint in his eyes had vanished once he realised that Noctis was hell-bent on repaying him for whatever he had done to Ignis.

There were so many things he could have said as Ravus approached him. He could have thanked his former enemy, he could have thanked his friends for not interfering after all.

“I’m…”

There were so many, many things. But all he managed to say, barely more than a raw whisper were four words, four words that hurt worse than anything else he had ever said in his life.

“Please, forgive me, Ignis.” A hot tear ran down his face as he dropped his head once more. “Forgive your weak and foolish prince.”

Knowing how destiny played out and how unforgiving the gods were, he would be joining his father and Luna soon enough. Perhaps one day he’d be able to apologise to Ignis in person, to a man without burnt skin and terror eternally frozen on his lifeless features.

“I’m sorry. I failed you.”


End file.
